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Consequences of the War in Sudan and the Instability in Niger: El Koufra, a New Sahelo-Maghrebi Migratory Crossroads

The spokesperson for the Municipal Council of El Koufra, Abdallah Souleymane, reached by telephone by El Watan, declared that โ€œthe situation of Sudanese refugees is confused since they enter the city in a disorderly manner, which prevents the Municipal Council from ‘rationally assess needs, even after having introduced the refugee card’. 

Abdallah Souleymane deplored โ€œthe absence of reliable statistics concerning the number of refugees, due to the lack of a support organization and due to the crumbling of arrivals in the fields and abandoned homes surrounding the oasis of El Koufra, in addition to numerous departures to Sebha, Benghazi, and Tripoli. 

The municipal official, however, put forward the figure of “thousands”, very far from the 400,000 refugees announced by the president of the program to combat irregular migration, Malek Dijaoui, whose organization assures that “the real number of Sudanese have fled their countries to Libya would be around a million. 

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The Sudanese are no longer only in Sebha, El Gatroun, or El Koufra in southern Libya where their news is not widely publicized, apart from a few videos on social networks. Many Sudanese have already gone to the North and for several days have been surrounding the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tripoli, to obtain refugee cards allowing them to be taken care of by the United Nations. 

To cover the 1,800 kilometers separating El Koufra from Tripoli, these columns of Sudanese benefited from various complicity among the security forces controlling the roads whether in the East, under the control of Khalifa Haftar, or in the West, under the control of the forces of the Government of National Unity. 

โ€œJust pay to pass. This is valid both for crossing borders and for going to the North,โ€ we assure, speaking on condition of anonymity. โ€œThere would even be secure crossings to Italy for 2000 euros,โ€ adds the same source. 

Worries

Abdallah Souleymane deplores the difficult situation experienced by the Sudanese in arriving in El Koufra and surviving there. โ€œThe nearest Sudanese city is almost 700 kilometers away, it is the third possible choice after Chad and Egypt. Some prefer Libya and Libyans because the material conditions are better,โ€ adds the spokesperson for the El Koufra Municipal Council. Souleymane regrets, however, the limited means of the commune isolated in the desert and very far from other Libyan towns, which makes it more difficult to supply it with the basic needs of life. 

The spokesperson for the commune does not hide his security concerns either since โ€œcriminals and terrorists can filter among these disorderly columns of refugees and in the absence of real border control or any reliable census at the reception hereโ€. 

It is useful to remember that the Libyan oasis of El Koufra, in south-east Libya, is considered the African entrance to Libya and the northern hub of illegal migration, in opposition to the Nigerian city of Agadez. , southern crossroads for irregular sub-Saharan migrants. 

El Koufra is, of course, 1,500 kilometers northeast of Agadez but a few hundred kilometers from the Sudanese and Chadian borders. El Koufra is therefore near the turbulence since it is the Sudanese province of Darfur which borders it in Sudan. 

Although distant respectively 1000 and 1800 kilometers from the main Libyan cities of Benghazi and Tripoli, the oasis of El Koufra is an obligatory passage for migrants, more so than Sebha, the capital of the Fezzan province of southern Libya, and more distant 900 kilometers to the West. 

Columns of survivors of the Sudanese war and irregular migration from Ethiopia and Eritrea are falling in El Koufra, the small town facing a growing humanitarian challenge. 

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